Amelia KramerPhD StudentsProfileProfileResearch Interests Food; food poverty; lived experiences; austerity and its uneven impacts; feminist geographies; geographies of friendship; geographies of emotion PhD Project Working Title: “Making the difference: friendship, geographies of care and food insecurity” There are suggestions that our social world is shrinking under austerity, as the spaces that support social interaction (from play groups to libraries) continue to close (Hitchin and Shaw 2019). Yet intimate social ties may remain crucial to the ways we ‘survive’ austerity. Set within the wider context of austerity, research on food poverty – currently experienced by an estimated 8.4 million people in the UK (The Food Foundation 2016) has begun to explore the role of family and of a range of community support mechanisms in enabling people to cope with food poverty. Much less attention has been paid to friendship, though the support of friends undoubtedly plays a key role in the ‘resilience’ of people facing food poverty. The project aims to explore the role of friendship in the everyday lived experiences of food poverty for women. It will focus on friendship as not only something which allows people to survive in food poverty but also as something that provides opportunities for resisting austerity. Academic Background BA Human Geography with a Year Abroad, QMUL and University of Auckland MRes Geography, QMUL Supervisors Professor Jon May Professor Catherine Nash Funding 1+3 ESRC Studentship Research